Promiscuous ... was a word I had never applied to myself. Possibly no one ever does, for it is a sordid word, reducing many valuable moments to nothing more than doglike copulation.

flirtation ... is a graceful salute to sex, a small impermanent spark between one human being and another, between a man and a woman not in need of fire.

The process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained.

Artists never make wars. They are too busy making life out of the matter of their visions.

Self-restraint may be alien to the human temperament, but humanity without restraint will dig its own grave.

Surely the hold of great music on the listener is precisely this: that the listener is made whole; and at the same time part of an image of infinite grace and grandeur which is creation.

You cannot know what you do not feel.